Ground source heat pumps provide heating and cooling with high energy efficiency and low greenhouse gas emissions. Despite these advantages, their widespread deployment is limited by high upfront costs, mainly associated with ground heat exchanger installation, which makes optimization a key requirement for cost-effective implementation.

Fourth-generation district heating and cooling systems based on geo-exchange technology extend the use of ground source heat pumps from individual buildings to the district scale. In these systems, heating and cooling are supplied through decentralized heat pumps connected by a shared network, where system operating temperatures and topology directly influence the system performance, which adds new aspects to the optimization problem.

This project focuses on the optimization of ground source heat pump operation in their emerging application within fourth-generation district energy systems. The optimization is carried out under Canadian ground temperature and weather conditions, with the objective of improving system efficiency and reducing overall costs.